Occupy protesters contributed to a loss of $4-8 million for the Port of Oakland last Monday after attempting to shut down shipping activity. The port generates about $8.5 million per day, and the losses could cause a ripple effect in companies around the world…

PG&E is finally taking legal accountability for last year’s San Bruno pipeline explosion, which claimed eight lives and resulted in 100 lawsuits. It’s still unknown whether PG&E’s act of contrition is genuine or a publicity stunt to recover the company’s image…

Public services in California such as higher and K-12 education, public safety, and health and social services will be affected by a $1 billioncut in spending after the state came up short on the year’s projected revenue. Governor Jerry Brown warned that both Californians and the state need to live within their means…

In attempts to alleviate the effects of budget cuts for college students, President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is proposing legislation to create a free digital library. The online library would consist of 50 core textbooks for lower-divisioncollegecourses and offer textbooks for as cheap as $20…

Google, who also wants to help schools amidst state budget cuts, is in the spirit of giving after donating $40 millioninasingle day towards battling slavery, helping education, and promoting technology. About a fourth of the money will go to organizations around the Bay Area…

Katie Sharify of Pleasanton is one of five patients to be injected with stem cells by Menlo Park-based company Geron – and she could be the last. The company has backed out of the trial, leaving Sharify, who is paralyzed from the waist down, waiting for someone to take over the trial. She continues to be a spokesperson for stem cell research despite the ups and downs the project has put her through…

Meanwhile, the recently-adopted CleanPowerSF program could have San Francisco homes running on 100% certified green energy by July – though it isn’t cheap being green. At least in the short term, participating residents could see their bills rise while the city begins buying green power on the open market.

Until 2002, Adrian Allen was working a good paying job in construction.

“I went to school for construction,” she says. “Graduated at the top of my class. I was the only female on an all-men’s crew.”

But then she developed thoracicoutlet syndrome, a rare condition that creates terrible pain in the neck and shoulder, and she was left unable to work. After cycling through four or five less physically-demanding positions, she was eventually forced to go on disability.

“Times got hard to where I couldn’t afford the utilities anymore,” Allen says. “It had gotten so bad that I couldn’t live like that any longer.” Allen had lived without power for several months and hot water for almost two years.

Allen, a native San Franciscan, is 43 years old. She mostly raised her four children in Modesto. These days, three of them are able to support themselves, but the other is only 11.

“If it was me by myself, I could do this by myself,” she explains. “But I have somebody that I’m responsible for.”

Allen and her son, who are staying with a friend for now, are one of over 250 families on the waiting list for shelter at CompassConnectingPoint. It’s a program of CompassFamilyServices that places families in temporary housing in San Francisco.

But it’s getting more difficult. When you think of homelessness in San Francisco, your first mental image might be of what’s visible: People huddled in blankets in the Tenderloin, panhandling in the Upper Haight, or making camp in Golden Gate Park. But those individuals don’t paint the whole picture. Nationally, at least 35% of the homeless population is made up of families with children who can’t very safely spend the night outdoors. It’s not much different here. In fact, the number of families who’ve put their names on San Francisco’s shelter waiting list is higher than ever – breaking almost every record now at 264 families. Five years ago, the waiting list was only a quarter as long.

It’s no surprise, then, that Compass Connecting Point’s waiting room is often filled with families not only seeking shelter, but also access to other resources like computers, food, clothing, and counseling.

Elizabeth Ancker, Assistant Program Director at Compass Connecting Point, says the number of families on the list has been shooting up – especially in the past few months. “We went up 22 families in a week and we’re not sure exactly why that happened,” she says. When Ancker started working at Connecting Point in 2006, there were only 76 families on the waiting list.

Furthermore, about 60% of the families on the list right now have never been homeless before. As Jennifer Friedenbach, Executive Director of the Coalitionon Homelessness, explains, “The huge piece is the recession of course. For very low income families who are spending most of their income on rent, when they lose hours, when they lose jobs, it’s very destabilizing, because they have very little cushion, they have nothing to fall back on, they have no accumulated wealth, and that ends up leading to homelessness.”

But San Francisco’s shortage of affordable housing is also contributing to the crisis. Friedenbach says that very little housing has been developed over the last 10 years for homeless families, which means these families end up in a cycle of re-entering the shelter system. “And then we have all these new families becoming homeless,” she adds.

The focus on eradicating homelessness in San Francisco has historically been on single adults, not families. “The reason for that is very political,” Friedenbach says. “When you have the most visible population out on the streets, the politicians want to really focus on them. They have to reduce them. Homeless families are very invisible. That doesn’t create a lot of political will to address the problem.”

Not being able to rely on social services forces many families to seek their own solutions. Compass Connecting Point’s Elizabeth Ancker sees families that are doubled up in the “projects,” with up to 10 people staying in a single bedroom apartment.

Those situations can be unsustainable. But even when desperate families seek short-term emergency shelter, they’re being turned away. Demand is just too high. According to Ancker, Providence Shelter had their first turnaway ever a couple weeks ago. And the Oshun Center, which is not actually a shelter but a drop-in center for women and families, filled up for the first time as well. “Families are reporting that they have to stay there during the day if they want to keep their spot during the night,” she explains.

What’s more, the wait time for long-term shelter placement is a least six months – sometimes as long as nine. Coalition on Homelessness Director Jennifer Friedenbach says the time spent in transition can be devastating.

“You have parents who are separated from their children,” she says, “or moving around from place to place to place, staying with friends here and there. You have people living in their cars, living in garages, having to stay in very unsafe situations that they would not normally be a part of because they don’t have another place to live.”

Adrian Allen and her son are staying with a friend right now – which is at least something. But that has its challenges, too, like assimilating to a different home dynamic.

“I just need to get out and be in my own situation and raise my son the way he’s supposed to be raised. He’s ready to move on. He says it every day: ‘I’m ready to go, mom. It’s time to go.’ So I’m doing what I have to do to try to make that possible.”

That’s probably the goal of every single family on the waiting list. But it might take months – or years – before it happens.

Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition on Homelessness is waiting for a meeting with the mayor to discuss the ways the city can act to help families waiting for shelter, such as local rental subsidy and opening government-owned housing. What are your suggestions? Let us know on our Facebook page.

Living in San Francisco, one becomes familiar with the variety in culture, each one seeming to have its own neighborhood. For Hispanics and Latinos, this neighborhood is the Mission.

If you haven’t been to Mission Street in a while, there have been many changes. The biggest change is in the people – Latinos. It seems that the percentage of Latinos has decreased while a new culture has moved in. Most of these movers are the so called Hipsters. Hipsters are seen as a kind of people that set their own trends, instead of just following pop culture. But in the Mission, being a hipster is very trendy.

It’s easy to spot hipsters on the Mission’s streets. They’re usually riding bikes, filling up coffee shops, or buying jewelry from the street vendors by the BART, to wear with something like a suit or a cocktail dress.

My friend Raquel Barajas’s parents are Mexican, and she grew up in San Francisco. Like any other Mexican kid, she spent a lot of time in the Mission with her parents. But when I asked her what she thinks about hipster culture, I got an unexpected answer: she likes it.

I was surprised by her response because to me, hipster culture could easily be seen as a threat to the Latin population in the Mission. Many of the things I remember from growing up around Mission Street just aren’t there anymore. Where I used to see Mexican bakeries; now there are expensive cafes that many people can’t afford. There used to be a CD store called Ritmo Latino, where everyone would go and hang out – music was always blasting. Now it’s a cell phone store.

When I go to the Mission now, it feels empty. People used to hang out on the street; now they’re all inside dark music venues. The Mission I remember was loud, full of life, out on the street. And now all that feels like it’s gone. What’s worse, people don’t even seem to notice – even some of the Hispanics who still live there. For example, my friend Raquel told me she didn’t really notice any difference. She also said that the changes in the neighborhood didn’t affect her identity. “Even if I did dress like a hipster, I’d still be Mexican,” she says.

Hearing this made me sad. To me, the Mission was one of the only places where I could experience Hispanic culture in the United States. My parents are Mexican, but they don’t follow a lot of cultural traditions. At school, no one really listens to Mexican music – it’ all Top 40 hip hop. But when I went to the Mission, Latin music was all I heard. People were always out on the street speaking Spanish. It was full of life, different than most of the places I was in. Being there felt like walking outside at night and feeling the cold on your cheeks.

Hipster culture is different. To me, it seems like the people who live in the Mission now are quieter. They sit in cafes. They don’t have kids, and they don’t play loud music. I see a lot more people in suits, with office jobs. I don’t have any problem with hipsters, but they’ve changed how the Mission looks, and sounds, and feels. It’s almost a completely new area.

I know that cities are always changing, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter if a culture is isolated. Latin culture made the Mission what it is, and I hope that people who live there now don’t forget that – whether they’re Hispanic or not.

Newly-elected mayor Ed Lee wants to eliminate homelessness in San Francisco, and he says the magic number to do it is three million — dollars, that is. $500,000 of those dollars come from a Dave Matthews Band fundraising concert in 2005…

65% of California adults support Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to raise sales and income taxes on people that earn over $250,000 a year…

Almost one third of San Franciscans have dogs, but dog walkers say they’re under fire: San Francisco officials are proposing special permits for walking two or more dogs. To qualify for the $250 permit, walkers must pass a course in canine etiquette and first aid…

In Occupy news, protesters succeeded Monday night in shutting down operations at the Port of Oakland for the second time in less than two months…

In West Sacramento, 100 truckers gathered to protest the Occupy protesters. Trucking company Devine Intermodal gave disgruntled workers the day off and served an on-site breakfast …

The city of San Jose has told several Occupiers their charges will be dropped if they don’t camp for two years. So far, three occupiers have promised not to occupy again.

Today, Occupy L.A. will form a picket line at the Port of Long Beach. It’s a decision influenced by the Occupy Oakland movement which managed to shut down the Port of Oakland in November. The day of action is not supported by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, though there are similar plans to shut down ports up and down the West Coast, including in Oakland…

The Occupy movement is taking on an additional form in Oakland with “Occupy Our Homes.” Activists last Tuesday were determined to “reclaim” and “liberate” foreclosures on a national day of action…

Over the weekend in San Francisco, police cleared the last Occupy encampment, arresting 55 people for illegal lodging. This is in contrast to Berkeley, where the movement continues to thrive. The camp in Civic Center Park is now the largest Occupy protest in the Bay Area…

Ustream, created by Brad Hunstable, is an online video platform that was created to help troops communicate with friends and families overseas. But now, it’s uses of user-generated live video have widened to the Occupy Wall Street movement. The website currently contains about 120 Occupy related channels, most of which are created and viewed by mobile phones. Now, almost anyone can broadcast live news…

Despite Democrats intentions to tax the wealthy, 16 companies in California have been put on the list of unpaid delinquent sales and use taxes by the California Board of Equalization. The 16 companies combined owe more than 21 million dollars…

In other financial news, a new study by the Commonwealth Fund has proven that the cost of health insurance is rising more rapidly than the incomes of families in California. In recent years, the average amount of healthcare premiums has risen to 52 percent while the incomes of families have only increased by a mere 4 percent…

In the world of art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is planning to add a new wing costing $325 million. That’s about five times the amount it was to build the museum in 1995.

As part of last Saturday’s live edition of “Crosscurrents,” KALW’s Ben Trefny interviewed Nikki Silva on stage at the Polish Club in San Francisco.

* * *

BEN TREFNY: And with me today is one of the famous radio-producing sisters. It’s Nikki Silva. Welcome to Live Crosscurrents.

NIKKI SILVA: It’s so great to be here. I love KALW.

TREFNY: So, the clip we showed tonight is from a piece called “The Secret Life of the Termite Queen.” So we’re wondering: Why’d you choose the termite queen?

SILVA: Well, Mother’s Day was approaching. Actually, Lisa Margonelli gave us the idea. We heard her talking about the termite queen. I think it was the line that she said about the termite queen laying an egg for every three seconds for 15 years – that sort of captivated our imagination. We were working on “The Hidden World of Girls.” It just seemed like the thing to do. We had to look further into this phenomenon, deep into this termite world where the queen is sequestered away and never sees the light of day. Is she happy? What’s happening down there?

TREFNY: Is she really having babies every three seconds?

SILVA: Every three seconds for 15 years.

TREFNY: Sounds painful. Your series “The Hidden World of Girls” is mostly about people. It’s about girls coming of age. It’s about women who are blazing trails and finding their way. Can you tell me more about this?

SILVA: Well, the stories we cover come from all over the world – even from Yemen and Jamaica and Ireland. One story that we did was about a woman from Timbuktu from a singing group. She was sort of talking about the different rituals like girls cutting their hair at certain age. And then Davia Nelson asked her, “Well, what’s the hidden world of a Tuareg girl?” She said, “Well, when you don’t love a person anymore, you must leave him.” The more times a women is divorced, the more beautiful and desirable she becomes. In fact, the Tuareg women have a big party when they get divorced. In fact, the divorce party is bigger than the wedding party. We kind of knew we were onto something with that particular story.

We did a story about traveler girls in Ireland. The travelers are the gypsies of Ireland. They’re not Roma, but they’re similar. They’re an ethnic group, and very discriminated against in Ireland. They travel in caravans and, historically, things are changing. We did a piece about the girls. In talking with several girls, it was clear that the big thing of childhood, for them, is just imagining your wedding, building up to your wedding, and being in weddings. The wedding is the ultimate. It’s big. Every thing’s big. The dress is big. Fifty-foot trains. And a horse and carriage. You have everything you want. So just following these different ideas about weddings and divorce was pretty surprising.

We worked with producers all over the country. Sandy Tolan sent us material from the West Bank for a piece called the “Speed Sisters.” It’s about Palestinian women who are speed racers. They race against men. They often wear full gowns and veils as they race against the men. It’s pretty unheard of.

TREFNY: That does seem like a handicap. What do the men wear? Probably not veils.

SILVA: They drive their own cars, which is interesting. The women really treasure their cars; they clean them, spiff them up, and love them.

Then we did a piece about horses, unicorns, and dolphins.

TREFNY: That’s not really a hidden world of girls. I have a nine-year-old daughter myself.

SILVA: We’d heard a lot about girls and horses. We were interviewing a marine biologist, who said she was getting love letters from girls who wanted to swim with dolphins. Dolphins are like the horses of the sea. And then unicorns, of course, are like the horses of the imagination. We tried this idea out on these girls who loved horses. Sure enough, they almost all wanted to swim with the dolphins, or had swam with the dolphins, and had long history of unicorn play.

TREFNY: So, from termite queens to unicorns, horses, and dolphins, how did you end up choosing these stories? They’re from around the world, too.

SILVA: Well, it wasn’t very scientific. It was kind of more if the story really spoke to us.

We were working with NPR correspondents and different producers around the country and everyone seemed to have a story that they wanted to pursue. We also opened up a phone line. We’ve done this with a lot of our projects over the years and it just opens up a whole world that we could never anticipate.

For instance, one of the calls that we got was from South Dakota, from a young woman who wanted to tell us about a Yankton Sioux coming of age story. They have a ceremony along the banks of the Missouri River. It was a wonderful message, very interesting, but it was also something about the way the woman told the story over the phone to us that just really captivated us and pulled us in. She was very hesitant and nervous that maybe her elders wouldn’t approve if she invited us. She had to ask permission, and she did ask permission and we did go, and it was really a phenomenal four-day ceremony where these young girls, many from very hard circumstances, are brought by these grandmothers and aunties and women in the group, and they spend four days on the banks of the Missouri. First they have to raise a teepee themselves, and these girls have never even thought about that before. And they have to build their lodge.

TREFNY: How old was she?

SILVA: The girl who called was about 18 and she had been through the ceremony. Her mother was one of the women who’d kind of reactivated this ceremony. They’d gotten the grandmothers together because the community was falling apart and they thought one of the ways to bring the community back together was to start with the girls and give them this experience. When they’re there for four days, they can’t touch food at all. They can’t feed themselves; they’re fed by their mothers and their aunties for four days. It’s a very moving ceremony. At the end, they’re taken into the teepee and dressed and washed. Their mother or auntie tells them what they were like when they were babies, how perfect they were, and how they’ve grown into beautiful, strong women, and they’re given a new name. When they come out of the teepee they’re all dressed in beautiful cotton dresses that one of the grandmothers has made. Then they feed the rest of the community the buffalo meat and the berries that they’ve prepared over the course of the four days.

Being a mom myself of two girls, I was very moved by the whole process. And we never would have known about the ceremony or been invited if we hadn’t opened it up and asked people to tell us what’s important. What are the rituals that are important for your girls? What should we be thinking about?

TREFNY: That’s a wonderful position to be in. So you have a couple of daughters, and I have a daughter, as I mentioned. Her name is Erin and she’s nine years old. One of the things I’ve seen her do is become a storyteller herself. Erin has created a character named Gertrude. Gertrude is a girl who has a huge “spoik” coming out of her hair and she’s always getting into all kinds of mischief; it’s really a sort of alter ego for her. So, I’m wondering, Nikki, my daughter is a burgeoning storyteller… how about you? Tell me about your origins of storytelling.

SILVA: My origins of storytelling are really being a listener. My mother was a fantastic storyteller. She could take the most mundane detail and make it into a cliffhanger. It was always very secretive and “just between you and me.” She sucked me in; she could talk about all the relatives and family and really get me going. My grandmothers, Narcissus and Rosebud… Rosebud was a country western singer; she played on the radio in the ‘30s in Oakland. She played the ukulele. And then my other grandmother, Narcissus, was from Portugal, and came over at 13, was married at 14, had five kids by 21, and was divorced by 25.

TREFNY: Sounds almost like a queen termite.

SILVA: Exactly. She had a lot of stories to tell – and a lot of power. She had a lot of power. So I kind of just inhaled it my whole life and it’s just sort of a way of life, storytelling.

TREFNY: What do you think of having that career you have now, traveling the world and learning all these intimate stories from people?

SILVA: It’s very much what I feel I was meant to do and love doing, so it’s been great.

TREFNY: How did you get involved in radio?

SILVA: I was kind of railroaded into radio. I was working in museum in Santa Cruz doing exhibits; I was just out of college. I was doing history exhibits about the community and talking to a lot of old people. And I got a telephone call one day from a girl named Davia Nelson. And she was working at KUSP, one of your sister stations, in Santa Cruz where I still live. And we have “Your Call” on our station, so we are very related. And Davia said she was very interested in doing oral histories on the radio, and that she’d gone out and talked to all these old timers and everybody she was talking to, it seemed as if I had been there just before, asking for their old photographs and artifacts to do something with at the museum. And so she came to the museum one day and we sat out on the porch overlooking the Monterey Bay and – this was 1979 – and we just kind of fell in love.

She was a great storyteller and we talked about our love lives, and all the things we dreamed of doing. And she said, “Well why don’t we do some of those.” And I said, “Yeah, let’s do some oral histories!” And she said, “Oh, by the way – I’m leaving for two months to go do a project about women outlaws of the west, and somebody has to take over my radio show. Will you do it?” And so I was sort of thrust in, knowing very little about it, and fell in love with it. One of the best things that happened – both radio and Davia.

TREFNY: Now Nikki I’d like to hear a bit of a story about WHER, the nation’s first all-girl radio station which existed from 1955-1974 in Memphis, Tennessee. Why don’t you give me a moment on this?

SILVA: I think of all the stories I’ve ever done, this has been sort of the most ongoing story. We’re still a big part of it. Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee started this radio station in 1955. Sam Phillips is the creator of Sun Studios and discovered Elvis Presley and Howlin’ Wolf and Johnny Cash. And he also started the first all-girl radio station in the world. He was quite a radio man and loved radio, and loved women. And so this was his sort of dream.

It was also kind of a gimmick and a novelty in the beginning. There was the world’s first all-black radio station in Memphis at the time, and the market was just flooded with stations. So he had to figure out a niche. So this was his niche. And when we started doing lost and found sound years ago, we came on this story and began trying to track down the women that made up this station for 20 years. And we found 20 of them. And it’s become this kind of quest for us. We’re still working on it, and actually working on a book. So when we talk about beginnings, this was just sort of the beginnings of women in radio in a big way, and sort of our foremothers.

TREFNY: So there weren’t that many women’s voices back then. Telling me something about some of the roots of women in broadcasting.

SILVA: Well there were a few, but they came on as special guests or little novelty acts. And WHER as I said started out in a jokey way. They were in one of the first Holiday Inns, and in this tiny little studio that was painted all pink and plush and with mirrors all around. And the air studio was called the Doll Den, and they had a little clothesline with women’s nylon stockings and girdles and underwear hanging everywhere…

TREFNY: Why?

SILVA: This was the way they got the attention! And Sam Phillips was great – he invented or discovered rock and roll, and he wouldn’t allow them to play any of his rock and roll music. It was all beautiful music: A man singing to a woman or a woman singing to a man, like you know, album music. It started out that way but you know, the women were really doing a job. And they took all the jobs at the station, they were doing the ads, they were doing all the programming, being their own engineers.

TREFNY: What year was that again?

SILVA: 1955 until 1974. And what happens is the history of this station really paralleled what was going on in the world and in the United States and culturally with the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Movement. And when you look at Memphis and their story, it’s really a big turning point when Martin Luther King is assassinated and the Garbage Strike and suddenly, these girl disc jockeys kind of turned into reporters. And people from all over the world are calling this station to get news about what’s going on in Memphis. And you really see this transformation.

The kind of irony of the whole story is that in 1973 or so, when the women’s movement is finally kicking in, the powers that be decided to change the call letters to WWEE – “We” Radio. They brought in the men, and the women became sort of the sidekicks again…

TREFNY: I love hearing the stories of your travels around the world and the intimate stories that we don’t really get to hear about. I was wondering if you could tell me about a voice that comes into your mind now and then, somebody who you met who had a really extraordinary voice and story to tell.

SILVA: You know, I’m going to say this, Sam Phillips who we just heard was such a genius and such a teller. I think Davia would probably agree with this as well. I mean we went to interview him several times, and he was one of those people where you would barely ask the first question and he’d talk for four hours without letting you get a word in edgewise…

TREFNY: That’s really hard to edit!

SILVA: It’s very hard to edit! The miracle was that he would always come around to sort of the punchline at the end of the joke. It just took him hours to get there. But he’s the one that just kept saying, “You go girls! You go.” There’s something about the voice. “You’ve gotta go find it. You’ve gotta work with this radio and share these voices.” He was so encouraging, and I think in some ways it was Sam Phillips for me.

TREFNY: So that actually brings us around to the end, and I want to go back to the beginning again. And I want to know: How does “The Secret Life of the Termite Queen” end?

SILVA: So, she’s deep inside this termite mound and laying all these eggs, and she’s in this kind of bomb shelter that’s created around her by her children. She’s so large now that she can’t get out. She’s stuck. And when she started out, she had wings, but they’re now chewed off. And she has these little bitty legs, and she’s just pulsating and exudating, and she’s kind of like this living ovary. Then when she’s sort of reached her limits and her time about 15 years later, her children gather round and it’s said that they lick her to death, extracting the juices, and it’s kind of a sad story…

Anyway, so it’s kind of the end of a cycle. But at the start of the story, you hear about the nuptial flight – all these babies that she’s given birth to, some of them are called alates, and they can reproduce. A lot of them can’t, but there are males and females that can. And they sprout these wings, and on one night a year, on this one warm, certain night, they come out of the termite mound and they just fly and fly, and they land. And then a male finds a female, and they rip off their wings and they crawl down into the earth, and they’re never seen again.

A report by the Public Policy Institute of California offers grim, and perhaps predictable, results: the middle class is shrinking to less than 50 percent across the state, and Bay Area incomes have dropped 12 percent since the recession started…
The… …

Long before Beyonce decided to redefine “diva” for pop culture, the term was associated with high culture. Nevertheless, divas of then and now have maintained a reputation, as late comedian Anna Russell explains, “…you would need to be a glorio… …

Early this morning police took down San Francisco’s Occupy encampment – the last large Occupy camp in the Bay Area. Seventy people were arrested, a few on felony charges of assaulting an officer…

Meanwhile, anti-tax groups filed a ballot measure today in response to Governor Brown’s tax initiative, which would raise sales tax by half-a-cent and create new taxes for the wealthy. The ballot measure would lock in recession-era spending levels and redirect money from schools to pay off state debt. The governor, however, argues that the revenue from his tax proposal would boost the education budget, not cut from it…

To aid California’s economy, Governor Brown has also proposed a 12-point pension reform plan, designed to raise the retirement age and offer less generous state and local pension benefits. There’s bound to be a union fight, but according to a recent poll, the majority of Californians are in support of scaling back public employees pension benefits…

Despite a staggering state economy, the South Bay led the nation in job growth last year, reporting a 3.2% market growth. Apple, Google, and Facebook are largely responsible for the increase in jobs, which some suspect – and hope – will spread throughout the Bay Area…

Despite the vibrant economy, the South Bay’s Portola and Castle Rock state parks face closure next July, unless the Portola and Castle Rock Foundation can raise $500,000. A similar campaign succeeded in saving the 87,000-acre Henry Coe State Park near Morgan Hill….

Meanwhile in San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee is thinking about vetoing legislation that would transform a Pacifica golf-course into 417 acres of natural park land…

And finally, you might be unhappy with the state of politics in California, but at least we’re providing great fodder for the Daily Show!

In an attempt to prevent deeper cuts to schools and other public services, Governor Jerry Brown has filed a ballot measure that would increase the sales tax by half a cent and income taxes by one or two percent, depending on annual salary. People who earn less than $250,000 will not see any change in their income tax rate. A number of outside groups have filed alternative tax measures as well, so tax hikes in California may be inevitable… …

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Meanwhile, members of an organization called “The 99 Percent Solution” have purchased a full-page ad in today’s Chronicle explaining their plan to create jobs, reduce widening income disparity, and curb government spending. Given how much criticism the movement has received for lacking concrete goals, Occupy’s first steps into the political realm may signify a shift away from symbolic gestures and towards more definitive ones… …

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The President of the University of California, Mark G. Yudof, has assembled a task force to assess the UC Davis police department’s use of pepper spray in response to a student protest on Novemeber 18th. Members of the task force include professors, administrators and undergraduates… …

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In light of recent cuts to education and rising concerns over unnecessary government spending, voter support for the California’s high-speed rail project is waning. According to a recent Field Poll, after seeing the final price tag (which runs close to $100 billion), more than a third of the project’s initial supporters would now vote ‘no’ if given the chance. Nearly two thirds of voters would like a revote on the project… …

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Famed international sailing competition America’s Cup is coming to San Francisco’s historic piers. But to make space for the event, a number of the piers’ long-time tenants are being forced to relocate: In the next two years, 77 businesses will have to clear out. Some of the displaced will receive rent credits to help ease the transition. …